12 Days of Anime, Day 8: A Red Faced Bandit Caught In The Act

What I said about Angel Beats! earlier is probably what I’d say about Amagami SS as the show is finishing up. It’s been a pretty entertaining watch aside from some arcs rubbing me sort of the wrong way (*cough*harukaandsae’s*cough). Despite that, in each of the arcs there were little touches that made it hard for me not to like each of Junichi’s various choices whenever their arc came up, and it adds to the general impression of things when seeing them interact with each other in later arcs.

Not fooling anyone with that face, sir.

This specific example comes from the first episode of Ai Nanasaki’s arc. The first time Junichi takes notice of her at all is by virtue of cutting through the park to find a bathroom, randomly seeing her on a swing set standing up, then getting an unintentional flash of something underneath her skirt as she jumps off of the set. After a relatively nervous (= creepy) and panicky introduction by Junichi, Ai initially proceeds to coldly tease the poor sap, pointing out his faults and letting him know that she knew what his intentions were after all along. The moment where she finally reveals her actual name to him occurs during another random meeting, as both run into a black cat that appears on school ground. As Ai crouches down and picks up the cat that Junichi was looking for, it’s hard for anyone not to notice him trying to glimpse a peak from his standing vantage point. Ai, noticing this, calls him out on it.

“You really want to see it that badly?” “Ueeh-?” “You want to see what’s under my skirt, don’t you?”

And despite Junichi’s denials to the contrary, Ai flashes him, and he still looks regardless.

I believe Shin answered in the affirmative to this question.

Shocked to find that she’s flashing him just her swimsuit under her shirt, he gives himself away about what happens in the park (where the same situation occurred), and after a bit of small conversation, Ai drops the hammer on him:

Oh ho!

She laughs it off later while still teasing Junichi as things go along, and the moment itself not really anything important in the long run of her arc, or in her later relationship with him. But it justified her joking asides that Junichi was a pervert prior to that moment (though I think plenty of guys, myself included, would do what he did as well to some extent), and that she was frank and honest enough to voice out her impressions . And that in a way, she called out the audience of the show, including myself. I mean, besides getting to know the characters, people watching Amagami SS also wanted to get to know the characters. And from what others have said, how Junichi was acting, taken to the larger idea of in a sort of “girls are a mystery in high school” situation is true to life in some ways. Go go pervert high schooler?

Junichi just got the brunt of it since he’s the actual character in the show, but I can’t help but feel that the “wanting to bury your face in my skirt” line applied to not just him, but also to the unintentional voyeurs we are in watching a show like this. I hope Junichi thought “I can’t deny that” after that exchange, since Ai definitely both successfully trolled him and gained some pretty interesting information about her new acquaintance. For someone who I barely paid attention to in the arcs prior to the beginning of this one, she definitely made a nice impression on me at that moment.😛